Yuval Harari: Techno-Religions and Silicon Prophets

Cord Cut

Got rid of our Comcast traditional cable television today. Still have Internet, Netflix, HBO Now, Amazon Prime and Hulu though, so plenty of TV to watch; just very little of it live.

Since Quinn has been born, we've watched most stuff on a day after delay anyway, which Hulu pretty well covers. There have also been weeks we hardly enter the TV room, instead watching things on a smaller living room TV or on our iPads in bed.

With the television season wrapping up now, it seemed like a good time to make the shift.

Live news channels might be the biggest change for us (neither of us watch much sport). But CBSN (CBS News) is Free on Apple TV so that should cover most breaking news.

The DC superhero shows have been dominating a lot of my evening viewing. With Supergirl moving to CW in the fall and CW being on Hulu, those alone will take up a lot of my television watching time next fall.

Sesame Street on HBO, Pocoyo on Hulu, and Daniel Tiger on Netflix has Quinn pretty covered.

Jenn is looking to spend more time on Xbox in the evening and less TV anyway.

May eventually look into an over the air antenna setup or an over the top SlingTV type package, but not feeling any urgency for that right now.

It is a weird thing though, feels like when I canceled my dial-up connection for cable internet years and years ago. Just kindof odd to turn the page on an older technology.

Concentrations of Power and Money

Around the world, and through centuries, governments have been created to keep the greedy and power mad in check.

Yet around the world the greedy and power mad persevere.

Any system that consolidates wealth and power, is a target for those that want both. Government is one big target of money and power.

So the greedy and power mad target government, no matter what type it is, because there's a lot of money and power in government.

Multinational corporations are the same as far as the greedy and power mad are concerned. Corporations are concentrations of money and power and are targeted as well.

Any concentration of wealth and power sits there like a lottery to be won, for those driven to compete for it.

Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks, and his response was simple, eloquent, and humorous:
"Because thatís where the money is."

It doesn't have to be a bank. It could be part of government, a corporation, a church, a charity, any organization at all.

If you concentrate power and money in anything, certain types of people will target that thing, attempt to corrupt it, and try to make it serve their needs.

There's no stopping people with a mindset bent to a never ending desire for more. No rules, no matter how embeded in government constitutions, corporate charters or social norms will stop those type of people. Even death will not work. For new greedy and power mad people are born every minute.

You can only hope that there are enough people that aren't that greedy and power mad; massive numbers of regular people who are largely satisfied and content, that the greedy and power mad remain vastly outnumbered. That the truly greedy and power mad are kept to the fringes and edges of society.

Society is stable enough, if the 1% are batshit crazy in their greed and power madness, as long as they don't truly piss off the 99% by taking things too far.

It's not up to the 1% to know where that line is. The 1% doesn't respect lines to begin with. They'll fight each other, if it gets them even a little more, just as soon as they'd fight the "little" people. It's up to the 99% to hold the lines, and periodically redraw them and tell the greedy and power mad the lines they can not cross.

No government, corporation, or church will do it. Although if they are strong, those are great and noble tools. The only thing that works is a broad consensus among the many about the outliers that says:

"These lines will not be crossed, you've gone too far."

Let's just hope that the mindset of the greedy and power mad doesn't become too accepted as truth, in the mindset of the majority, because then things fall apart for everyone, the greedy, the power mad and regular people alike.

Ramblings on a 2 and 1 year anniversary

Tomorrow will be one year since Jennifer's maternity leave ended, marking one year of my doing the stay at home dad thing.

Last week also marked 2 years since I left my job in Meijer's advertising department.

I feel like I should mark both dates with a blog post of some kind. While I've been thinking about the topic the last few days, I haven't come up with much I feel needs writing.

I've been glad for the year I've spent at home with my son. It's hard to think of it as a year though. It feels more like a rolling 2 month time period I'm in the middle of constantly.

I'm aware of the past month, and there are holidays and events I look toward in the coming month, but my sense of time is far different than when I was working in an office Monday thru Friday, five days a week. My son, now almost 15 months keeps growing and the routine of 3 months ago isn't quite the same as the routine of today, hence for me, the sense of a rolling 2 month time frame.

As to not working in an office the last 2 years, that's only recently started to provide it's own perspective. The first 6 months of not working was sort of an office detox for me. I did a little freelance here and there, so I sortof replicated my previous workday experience in my home office instead of an employer's office. It wasn't until caring for my son full time during the day that there was finally a break in that ingrained daily project mindset.

Whatever projects I've wanted to do the last year have needed to be during naps, after the little one goes to sleep, or on a weekend here or there. That's a different approach to utilizing time than my previous 20 year office work structure. I'm still getting used to the change. I think by the time I am used to the change though, my son's routine will likely change again as well.

I've started several times to muse in different directions about different facets of the last 12 months, but I keep backspacing over them, they are interesting to me, but I think other people's mileage would really vary.

I've realized is how different every parent's experience is during these first few years. One or both spouses working, married or single parents, close grandparents or far grandparents, daycare or no daycare, first kid or multiple kids, whether close friends or family have kids at similar ages or older or younger kids or none at all, temperments and ages of parents, financial situations, or health of the parents or the child; there are so many different variables.

There are so many different experiences, and the few universal truths I've gleaned seem more cliche than anything much worth typing.

Anyway. It's been 2 years post-office (for now) and one year as a stay at home dad; blog post written.

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad